Body Sculpting

 

My current routine means I go through Washington Square Park about once a week; well it’s more like that I am in this neck of the Manhattan concrete woods and make a point to stroll through this always lively patch that has been a part of all our lives for so long. Always a little more lively when NYU is in session and being September, classes have started. It seems about once a month there’s a picture worth taking for a blog post. So this guy was doing the human statue thing, standing without moving – didn’t for about the five minutes that I looked and pondered – he took the time to spray paint himself and clothes and hoops and then stand there risking muscle cramp and subject himself to gawkers, the least I can do was document the moment that I saw him blink. Well, you can’t quite tell from the picture that he blinked and to be fair, blinking was the only movement. He played a very convincing statue; he projected the gray in which he was covered. But you see the eyes and that gave the game away: It’s Alive! The can in front revealed he accepted donations, get paid for doing nothing. You call this nothing? It’s art. It’s the highest form of art:  life imitating art, literally and figuratively, which hard ever happens. He’s a petrified mime. The absence of performance is in fact, the performance.

See, he's blinking, his eyes may appear open but that's just the moment of blink captured. I love the faintness of the racoon effect on the perimeter of his eye lids and eye sockets, or maybe this metal statue uses flesh colored eye liner.